1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a packaging object supplying apparatus, box body supplying apparatus, boxing apparatus, packaging system and packaging method and particularly to a packaging object supplying apparatus for supplying two or more kinds of packaging objects to the packaging unit in a predetermined array, a box body supplying apparatus capable of treating boxes of various sizes and shapes with single equipment, a boxing apparatus having the box body supplying apparatus and a packaging system capable of automatically packing small boxes of various shapes and sizes into corrugated board boxes according to a predetermined pattern.
2. Description of the Related Art
Usually, a film cartridge containing a photographic roll film is incorporated in a plastic film case and the film case is sold in a form of a carton which is a sack carton made of coated board.
Although conventionally, a carton generally adopts a small box type in which one film case is accommodated in each small box, recently, production number of a package so-called multi-small box type package in which two or more film cases are accommodated therein have increased.
A small box with a single film-type package is a standard packaging style for a film cartridge and its production amount is large with a small deflection in its quantity. Thus, a small box with a single film-type package can be automatically manufactured.
On the other hand, as for a multi-small box type-package, although production amount for one packaging style is not so large, there is a huge deflection in production quantity between different packaging styles. Further, this type has various packaging styles depending on the quantity of the film cases accommodated therein, presence/absence of a header which is a tab-like member and position thereof.
Therefore, it is difficult to manufacture a multi-small box type-package automatically and thus, packages of this type often are manufactured by hand or a semi-automatic packaging machine. Therefore, there is such a problem that its production efficiency is not raised.
Although conventionally, a packaging unit capable of coping with various styles of the multi-small boxes has been demanded, there are following problems in realizing such kind of packaging unit.
(1) Sack cartons used for the conventional multi-small box, that is, small boxes made of coated board are separated into two types; a type in which a film case is loaded from opening portions on both ends, and a type in which a film case is loaded from an opening portion on the side face thereof. A cartoner, which is a packaging unit for packaging the film case in the sack carton, cannot cope with two kinds of the sack cartons easily.
(2) In a conventional multi-small box, bar code sizes and printing positions are not made uniform.
(3) Even among multi-small boxes in which the same number of film cases are loaded, there is a difference in header positions and sizes.
(4) Multi-small boxes are often gathered together in a specified number and shrink-packaged. Upon shrink packaging, the multi-small box needs to be assembled in a different pattern in accordance with a presence/absence of its mount paper, header position, size, number of film cases loaded therein and the like.
(5) When the multi-small boxes are packaged in a corrugated board box, they need to be packaged in a different pattern in accordance with a packaging style of the multi-small boxes.
Among the above-described problems, it is considered the problem (1) and the problem (2) can be solved by making uniform the direction of loading the film cases in the sack carton and unifying the size and printing position of the bar code to be printed on the multi-small box.